Advice urges wider sharing of heart care decisions

Your Health Matters

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2011 file photo, former Vice President Dick Cheney shows his heart pump while discussing his newly published book, “In My Time - A Personal and Political Memoir,” which is co-authored by his daughter Liz Cheney, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif. The American Heart Association is urging doctors to talk more honestly with people who have very weak hearts and are considering pumps, pacemakers, new valves or procedures to open clogged arteries. Too often, patients with advanced heart failure don't realize what they are getting into when they agree to a treatment, and doctors assume they want everything possible done to keep them alive, says the new advice, published Monday, March 5, 2012, by the American Heart Association and endorsed by other medical groups. (AP Photo/David McNew, File)A heart device might save your life but leave you miserable. That awful possibility is the reason for new advice urging doctors to talk more honestly with people who have very weak hearts and are considering pumps, pacemakers, new valves or procedures to open clogged arteries.

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